Reviews

The Victor Vran Review: Does the Demon Hunter Hit His Mark?

Victor Vran hails from from Haemimont Games, developers of Tropico and Omerta: City of Gangsters. These are two very solid games with clever game design and original execution of old school mechanics. When the company announced they were making an Action-RPG ala Diablo style Dungeon Crawling I was skeptical. After playing the game I can say I am impressed to an extent. Here is our Victor Vran review!

You play as Victor Vran, basically a Van Helsing type character focusing more on demons than vampires. You must fight off hordes of demons to keep the people of Zagoravia safe. The story is pretty standard gothic fantasy storytelling of a clearly defined hero and villain. Don’t expect much depth or surprises when it comes to this game’s story, but then again the story isn’t why we’re here. The gameplay, on the other hand, is pretty damn good.

Vran’s combat is a consistent, well oiled machine with a nice level of freedom when it comes to developing your character. Unlike other RPGs like Diablo and Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, there are no classes. Your play-style is governed by the skills, weapons, and spells you equip. Vran has two slots for weapons and typically you will want one set to be a melee weapon and the other a ranged weapon. Personally I love the scythe and shotgun combination, but for those who prefer there are long range guns and fancier melee weapons to use. Each come with their own skills to use as well.

In addition to weapons, you can choose outfits that modify your base combat values to give you some resemblance of a class. These can be changed at any time in case you would like to experiment with different combinations.

Game flow is very straight forward. Enter level, complete level, move on. Now every level has a set amount of side objectives to complete. These earn you stars so you can earn rewards like exp or equipment. These secondary objectives range from easy to incredibly difficult. The ones that are either timed or require you to kill certain amounts of enemies without getting hit are the more frustrating ones.

The level design is pretty good, finding secret areas can be a challenge so it makes you spend more time playing. I like that. The challenge system is a welcome addition to this genre. Victor Vran is able to stand out with an original art style with small but noticeable originality when it comes to it’s design. While the game lacks any large amount of replay value, it does keep you playing. This is a great game for everyone, but veterans of the genre will find that this game lacks the amount of high quality depth that Diablo and Path of Exile have. In the end, my verdict is thus: I highly recommend you get Victor Vran for PC.

About Zach Martinez

Freelancer here at Armed Gamer, North American Video Game Correspondent for Following the Nerd, and a regular on Examiner.com, Zach has made somewhat of a name for himself at the age of 23. He has been writing professionally for just over 5 years now. He doesn't care about resolution or frames per second, he cares about what matters most, the games. You can reach reach him directly at zach.martinez09395@yahoo.com.